There’s some spark though in the film’s first half, when Bernstein unflinchingly depicts Maria’s secret sexual desires, and defines her daily life as a series of awkward experiences: being clumsy at school, seeing a movie with her father that suddenly turns raunchy, and so on.
“Look Away” is at its scariest not when Maria’s trying to murder people, but when she’s quietly enduring adolescence … and all its terrors.

mostly fails as a “killer teen” movie. The pace is too slow, and the mood too somber.

The setup is ambiguous enough that we're not laughing at it, but it's also, perhaps, too vague. Too much certainty likely would have ruined this material, but the extreme ambiguity becomes a significant issue, too. We want to sympathize with Maria, but no matter how one interprets what's happening to her, Look Away keeps us at a distance from the character.